He thought he should like to get acquainted, but he had not the courage. He could not offer them papers or magazines when evidently they were not in a mood to read. Besides, that sort of thing is not done in England, or, for that, matter, in America, as a rule, on short train journeys. Except for that one glance from the beautiful one, which was to any human being in sight as an audience, he had no sign that they recognised that there was any one else in the compartment.
"I shall be glad to be in Truckleford again, shan't you?" asked the plain girl.
"Of course I shall! I can see Uncle Arthur waiting on the platform for us now."
"And hear him say Henriette, my dear, and Helen, my dear!"
Then they were surprised by the young man opposite them declaring that he must be about their seventeenth degree cousin and that he was going to Truckleford, too.
"Really!" they exclaimed together.
He might have known what they would say. He had wondered if Americans used guess as often as the English use really. There are many kinds of reallys: forbidding, surprised, sceptical, inquiring. This was all kinds. It was also the kind that leaves the next move with the other person.
"That is, if the Reverend Arthur Sanford, of Truckleford," Phil explained, "is my sixteenth cousin and you are Henriette and Helen Ribot, and my father, the Reverend Franklin Sanford, of Longfield, Massachusetts, has reckoned accurately."
"It sounds very mathematical," said Helen, the plain one, thoughtfully, looking toward Henriette to take the lead, which she did charmingly.
"We've heard about you, Cousin Philip Sanford," she said, and her eyes were sparkling into his in a way that made it difficult to look away; "let us consider ourselves introduced."